“Overwhelming,” Rob murmured it against the little constellation of darker freckles at the point of Gamelyn’s shoulder. “I like the sound of that.”
“THEY SAY you’re of the fae.” Gamelyn had one leg curled around Rob where he was sprawled, half atop Gamelyn. His cheek and nose were buried in black curls, his eyes closed as he breathed in the scent of him: mint and light sweat, grass and horse.
“Who?”
“The villeins of Blyth. They call you the Hunter.”
“Mm,” Rob said against his chest.
“They say you’re a forest spir… uhn….” This as Rob began to trace his tongue along Gamelyn’s breastbone.
“Does it matter?”
Rob worked his way—and his tongue—down to Gamelyn’s belly, teasing at the fuzz below his navel. Gamelyn’s eyes crossed and his brain went blissfully dormant.
And the Holly King, Green Lord, Green Hob, found a young Lord sleeping beneath the leaves of the Oak, and waked him by tugging at his… ear.
Dormancy fled with a jolt. The words were, almost verbatim, what Gamelyn had heard from Eluned, telling her tale in the bailey. Except this was no female’s voice: it was deep, and held some strange amusement. Full of power, indisputably male. It wasn’t—not quite—Rob’s voice; granted, Rob’s mouth had been too busy skating across Gamelyn’s belly to have spoken. Yet Rob had gone still against Gamelyn, eyes clouded and… vacant, somehow, as if Rob’s soul had somehow left his body. The notion was abruptly terrifying
He had heard. Gamelyn would have staked his life on it.
“What was that?” Gamelyn breathed.
The black eyes slid to meet Gamelyn’s, now with a tiny, blue-white spark dancing deep in them.
Probably only the fire.
But… it stayed as Rob bent, kissed Gamelyn’s belly once more then lurched forward, propping a hand to each side of Gamelyn’s torso. Peering at him, so piercing and steadfast that it made Gamelyn squirm, though he could not look away.
Instead, he pushed at Rob, rolled him onto his back so that Gamelyn was the one with hands propped to either side of Rob’s body. “You heard it, too,” Gamelyn said. “Didn’t you?”
“What,” Rob answered, quiet, “did you hear?”
“A voice. I heard a voice. It sounded a little like you, but… deeper. And it said… it was the words of a story your mother told—”
“My mother?”
“She was telling a story to the children in the bailey. I’d just come from Matins.” He trailed off, unwilling to think of that.
“I had a dream, the night before,” Gamelyn began again, then just as quickly trailed off, again. If he wasn’t keen to put himself back in the cold, sterile church light, neither was he keen to revisit the darkness of that dream, let alone retell it to the one he’d….
“I’ve been waiting….”
And here Rob was, lying beneath him, in his arms, and Gamelyn had a sudden, horrific wonder if, did he raise his hands, he’d find blood on them. He shoved back, looked at his palms, felt himself shudder with relief when they were pale and unmarked.
Hold fast, young sapling. Blood is also the life… is that not what they teach you in those cold, stone walls? Truth can be found everywhere, you see.
Rob was sitting up, concern twisting his brows, forelock falling into his face. “Gamelyn, what—?”
He hadn’t heard it. Hadn’t heard the voice.
Blood is the life….
No. No. He put his hands over his ears, as if he could shut it out. To imagine a world in which he would hunt down Rob and take him down like an animal was to despair.
To despair was to turn one’s back on God.
Yet had he not, already, done just that?
“Gamelyn.” It was so soft, his name murmuring against the cavern walls. Rob’s hands had reached out, pulling his hands away, cupping his face with a touch as gentle as Rob’s voice, as Rob’s breath wafting across Gamelyn’s cheeks.
“How long have the dreams been coming?” was Rob’s next query. Still soft, still matter-of-fact, as if it were nothing unusual.
Nothing damned.
The hands upon his face were insistent; Gamelyn gave in, found his gaze seeking Rob’s, his hands rising to grip tight to the tensile strength of those brown wrists. The only other time he’d seen a look so frighteningly open on Rob’s face had been on the mere, surrounded by fireflies.
Or this night, Rob holding him down, while Gamelyn took him and all the while felt as if he was the one being taken….
“Pull on your breeks and come with me,” Rob whispered. “I’ve something to show you.”
FALSE DAWN was giving a faint light across cleared fields as they broke from the tree cover, wary and watchful as a brace of deer. They didn’t go far from the trees, a mere stone’s throw down to a huge, flat rock jutting from the slope.
Gamelyn remembered this rock, how his father had thought to plow it up from the earth. Several draft harnesses had been broken in consequence, then some digging tools; only when the rock was found to be five times again larger below ground than above did they leave it alone.
Now the rock was… decorated. Set like a banquet table, it had been garlanded with flowers, laced with ivy and braided withies. There was a basket of apples there, several leather- and cloth-wrapped parcels, pewter mugs and wooden bowls. A small and spare feast, but feast nonetheless.
“Maybe next time He’ll show himself as a handsome man to woo a maiden. That would be an honor!”
“’Tis only right we honor His visit.”
This was what they’d meant.
Only the “handsome man” wasn’t wooing any maidens.
And Gamelyn wasn’t feeling guilty, only smug and satisfied. Mine, he told them. Mine.
“They came to my cave, the first time,” Rob explained, almost shy. “Then, they came here.”
Just above the rock, Gamelyn squatted on his haunches and looked to the south. Blyth could be clearly seen, though it looked more a gray stack of aggies with several scattered hither and yon, waiting for play. “You were who they meant. The Hunter.”
“Aye.” Rob hunkered down next to him.
“But… he’s not real. He’s a spirit.” A demon, a tiny righteous doubt gave prompt from behind his eyes.
Not here, he told it. Not here.
“Aren’t spirits real, then?” Rob’s voice was, yet again, so reasonable.
Gamelyn frowned.
“Don’t spirits live in us?”
Possession. Doubt was insidious. Sorcery.
“And sometimes, when we don’t listen, things make us listen. Make us… take part. Ent it what every decent person does? Try to live a fine life, bring what blessings and magic they have into being?”
Doubt sniveled, shriveled. “That’s why you brought the fish. They bring you gifts and you give them food in return.”
“The eternal return.” Rob hunkered down next to him. “Y’ don’t get something for nowt in this world. Nature doesn’t work that way. Planting has to be done if we expect crops. The fields must lie fallow to rest, and we scatter rot and compost to give ’em back their strength….”
“‘To everything there is a season’,” Gamelyn quoted.
“Aye, that’s about right.”
“That’s from the Bible, you know.”
Rob shrugged. “I’ve heard there’s truth to be found in every book, if y’ look. I don’t read well enough to look, ’m afraid.” Rob lurched up, rested his forearms on his knees. “People need something to believe in. You should know that, you follow the Christ.”
“And what do you follow?” It was a dangerous question; Gamelyn was almost afraid to hear the answer.
To hear spoken what he knew had to be true….
Rob gave Gamelyn a look, precocious and patient.
“They believe in you, somehow.” Gamelyn persisted. “But what do you believe in?”
“They believe in what lives in me. They believe in the old gods,” Rob said,
slowly. “The powers that come, not from someplace far away, but from here.” He laid his hand flat against the earth. “It’s here, all of it.”
“The old gods aren’t dead….”
“And you believe in what’s… here.”
“I don’t just believe.” Rob turned to him, and it seemed the sunlight had sucked itself up and backlit his eyes with embers. “If you reach out to something, and it reaches back… if you’re filled with something greater than yourself, then is it belief? Or what is?”
“It sounds like….” Gamelyn frowned, looked down. “What I feel when I pray.” He snuck a sideways look, expecting ridicule. Instead he found Rob, chin on hands, listening.
“Does your god answer you back?”
“I… think so. Sometimes. I guess that’s where belief comes in. Faith.”
“It sounds… peaceful. Trusting.”
“It always has been.” Until you… and then nothing would give me peace but you.
So,” Gamelyn ventured, slow, “this, um, season. Is it yours?”
Rob gave him a thoughtful look, then stood, approached the rock. He did it as gravely, as reverently as Gamelyn himself approaching the chapel altar; it thrilled the same tickle of energy—of potential—through Gamelyn, the same lift of hair at his nape and arms.
So many things that Gamelyn had thus far seen in Rob, but this raw veneration was a frank surprise. Rob seemed so… wayward.
“The first time, some of the animals took a lot of it before I could get here.” Rob shrugged, and just like that, the spell was broken. “Well enough; it feeds what needs it.”
“Won’t something take the fish, then?”
“Nay, I’ve warned ’em away.”
“Warned them.” Again, the tiny thrill at Gamelyn’s nape.
Rob bent down, took up a long spray of green and purple, separated a small sprig from the larger and strode over to Gamelyn. Surely he wasn’t going to do what Gamelyn imagined he was….
Christ’s blood, but he was. “Are you actually putting flowers in my hair, Rob Loxley?”
“Actually,” Rob was grinning, “I am. See, there are some pleasures to be had by having a forest spirit as your lover.”
Gamelyn snorted.
“Just don’t eat it. It’s foxglove. ’Twill stop your heart.”
And wasn’t that beyond apropos.
Rob smirked, then knotted the hair at his nape and shoved a purple sprig in for himself. Gamelyn found himself contemplating how lovely the purple looked, tucked in amongst black tangles, then decided he should just go throw himself from Blyth’s highest turret. He was beyond pathetic.
Rob, meanwhile, had left off flowers for a small drawstring pouch. “If this is what I think….”
It was like watching a child unwrap a coveted Christmas gift. Gamelyn had to smile as Rob let out a yip of pleasure. “Aye, these! These are brilliant! I’d never had them before I came here… d’you want some?”
In the parcel were nuts, spiced and honeyed, and since Gamelyn not only knew of them, but had semi-regular access to them, he wasn’t about to deprive Rob.
Definitely Christmas. Rob scoffed down the nuts like he was starving, then proceeded to lick the sweet spice from his fingers, one by one. Gamelyn didn’t even realize how riveted he was by the sight until Rob peered at him, still sucking his fingers, then sidled up to him and kissed him, spiced sweet still laced upon his tongue.
Gamelyn suddenly remembered that they were on open ground, where anyone could see. He pulled away, cheeks heating. Rob’s eyes clouded for an instant—and it hurt, made an empty hollow deep in the pit of Gamelyn’s belly—but just as quickly Rob’s eyes cleared and he turned back to the altar.
That’s what it was, Gamelyn realized. An altar.
It gave him another shiver, this one of apprehension.
He watched, silent, as Rob tucked the goodies away in his rucksack, replacing them with tidbits from his own stash, leaving the fish in a shaded spot.
Neither of them spoke until they’d returned to the cavern, and, with mutual and silent consent, started grooming their horses. Rob was eating again, this time an apple. Not that he’d gotten more than a few mouthfuls—both Arawn and Diamant were making greedy faces and he kept giving them bites.
Each of them knew the day had to start. Neither of them wanted it to.
“Next time, you’d best walk in. Diamant’s not exactly a crofter’s nag.”
“Neither is Arawn.”
“He’s a sight easier to hide in the dark than auld Testicles.” Rob gave the stallion a fond slap on the rump. “Or than you, towhead. Put a bloody hat on.”
“And a wig and a squint?”
“If you have to.” Rob met his eyes. “You know they canna find us out.”
Gamelyn looked down and nodded. Wondered, if in this place, in this little Eden that had somehow been made, there was no sin….
“’Ware the Hob, the Green Man; he’ll take you into his kingdom and you’ll never come out again….”
And would it be so horrible, after all?
No sin. No guilt. No death or grief or sickness… or if they existed, it was somewhere outside of him—away—so it couldn’t touch him. Inviolate, touched only by spirit. By a forest spirit that resembled more a dark angel; one with no mercy and all of passion.
“Are you, then?” Gamelyn said into the next silence.
“Am I what?”
“A fae.”
Rob stilled mid-chew and slid his gaze toward Gamelyn, unreadable. “Are you making fun of me?”
“I’m not. I’m just—”
“Trying to make light of something you waint understand.” Rob’s voice was flat. Almost disappointed, and that hurt almost as much as that look in his eyes when Gamelyn had backed away. “As if, in doing that, y’ can make it less powerful. Less threatening.” Rob divided the apple core between the two horses then walked over to Gamelyn, not stopping until he was merely a hand’s breadth away. “Are your people so scared, then? Is your god so scared that he would bid his people hunt us, hang us, burn us?” Rob leaned against Diamant’s ivory croup, murmured, “Are you like your people, then? Was last night just another tumble… an ‘error in judgment’?” Gamelyn’s own words, slapping him in the face, and it was intimidating, actually, how well Rob could ape a noble’s accent. “Will y’ spend this next fortnight praying it never happened? Did I wait for nowt?”
I waited for you….
“No.” It was a whimper.
“My mother thinks you are. My father thinks everyone is, at their heart, good. But neither of them think I have the sense of an in-season heifer, trusting you. Neither of them think we can break free of what chains us.”
“And what do you think?”
Rob had opened his mouth for another biting response; he shut his mouth, blinked.
“What do you think?” Gamelyn said again, very soft.
Rob seemed puzzled. Uncertain. “You know, no one’s ever asked me that. Not even Marion, not like that. And now a nobleman’s son wants to know what I think. Not if I think. Not if I feel.” Those eyes once again considered Gamelyn, deep and dark and almost cold. “What I think. Right. I think our biggest mistake is just… giving in. Clutching our own chains and bending our necks while they load us up with more. My mam and da? I love them, they’ve given me so much that’s good, and honest… but they’re… afraid of what they are. Both of them, as afraid as your people. Your churches and priests, clutching at the light because they think darkness is filled with some sort of evil. So they clutch harder to their power. My people are starved, killed, beaten.” A strange little twist of a smile. “And yours have all the spiced nuts.”
It was so absurd that a snort of laughter escaped Gamelyn. Rob tipped his head, the strange little smile still on his face, and started to turn away.
Gamelyn reached out, unaware of what he was doing until he had grabbed at the back of Rob’s tunic and pulled. Unlaced, it fell down Rob’s back, and when he started to turn b
ack around, Gamelyn put a hand to his nape, held him there. Slow, considering, Gamelyn raised his free hand to the scars crisscrossing Rob’s back. Lean-roped muscle quivered as Gamelyn traced his fingers across the satiny, puckered tissue, like Diamant shuddering at a fly, and ribs separated, arched outward as Rob sucked in a quick, deep breath.
“I felt these, last night. I saw them, by the mere, the first time we….” Gamelyn trailed off as his voice caught, tried again. “Who… who did this to you?”
“I was gormless enough to stop one of Nottingham’s drunken soldiers from slapping around a lass at Loxley’s tavern.”
“Christ. How—?”
Rob shrugged. “I clocked him with m’ staff. Pretty hard. I’m not as good with one as Will, but better than any soldier. For all the good it did me. There were ten of ’em, all told. But it took five to drag me out into the dirt and hold me down while one whipped the skin from my back.”
Gamelyn’s hand trembled against Rob’s back, but he refused to draw away. “Did no one… help?”
Another shrug. “Who would? The girl and her sister? Their old da? A bunch of old farmers?”
Someone would have been better than nothing, Gamelyn thought, miserable.
“At least the girl got away. Me da told me I was lucky they’d not decided I was pretty enough to substitute for the girl I’d let escape.”
And the thought of that made Gamelyn grit his teeth.
“He was right, but it was wrong to just… let them have her. Dogs, they were. Da did travel all the way to Nottingham to complain to the sheriff about what had happened. The sheriff told him I was lucky the soldiers hadn’t taken me for some mangy wolfshead and that my lesson had been cheap enough.” Rob spat on the ground. “Wolves ent likely to torture somethin’ that shows throat. I might have been stroppy enough to get knocked around, but by the time that whip cut me a few times, I was cryin’ for ’em to stop. Never felt pain like that my whole life. But they kept going on. And on.”
It made Gamelyn so sick with anger that he wondered if he was going to hurl his guts, then and there. Forcibly he reswallowed his gorge, leaned his head against Rob’s back. He couldn’t stop running his fingers over the scars, as if he could by magic or will erase them. “I’m… sorry.” It seemed so painfully inadequate.
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